Message From the Bosom of the Past

There they are, one after the other -- globular, nourishing, incandescent.


Ever since the first artist picked up the first palette, painters have been interested in women's breasts. And Diane Neumaier is interested in painters.


"Metropolitan Tits," a photo exhibition which opened this week at the L Gallery, isn't shy about making a point. In the grand tradition of post-deconstructionist criticism, Neumaier's show is a close reading of cleavage through the ages.


Neumaier's 50 photographs show a series of female torsos -- all hanging in New York's Metropolitan Museum -- with their heads ungraciously cropped off, so there is nowhere to look but down. After wandering past this critical mass of bosoms, her thesis jumps out at the most unreconstructed viewer: The way men paint women is the way men think of women.


Sitting in the gallery before her opening, Neumaier lucidly explains her point. Since 1988, when she completed work on "Metropolitan Tits," the American university professor has been flexing her feminist vocabulary -- "fetishism," "objectification" and "representation" come up a lot -- to explain her strain of meta-art history. Russia, the New York native confessed, is a particular challenge.


"I have gotten some funny reactions," said Neumaier, who received a Fulbright grant for a year's work in Russia. "Sometimes it has been the exact opposite of what I intend or expect." After appreciatively examining Neumaier's critique of objectification, one group of photographers proudly presented her with a collection of their own female nudes. "It was the exact thing I was critiquing," said Neumaier, shrugging. "But they gave me flowers, it was all very nice. I said thank you."


Later at the Moscow opening, as stragglers camped out on couches and tossed back plastic cups of champagne, visitors scanned the walls with a mixture of amusement and admiration.


As a critical exercise, "Metropolitan Tits" will be useful to Russian audiences who are unaccustomed to reassessing classical art, said Gennady Gushchin, an artist. The painter Ivan Churkin praised her shift from straight representation to "art about art," which he said was "not discussed here yet."


The feminist thesis did not captivate him. "It is interesting to think about the feminist problem of breasts being everywhere," he said with a small smile. "We were not so familiar with that problem."


Neumaier unflinchingly categorizes herself as a feminist photographer -- an overt ideological stance which has baffled some Russian photographers. She is quick to point out that her feelings toward the art itself are anything but hostile: "When I was printing I would just gasp at how beautiful the paintings are," she said. "I'm not advocating burning paintings."


As Neumaier sees it, the progression reveals "a simple narrative" of female identity. Thus, the Renaissance: Breast as Instrument of Production. Sixteenth-century breasts portrayed nursing mothers, highlighting women's role as nurturers.


Then, in the early days of capitalism, Breast as Showcase. In the 17th and 18th centuries, painters turned toward private patrons, who could afford to commission portraits of their wives. Early 19th century: Breast as Muse, provocatively peeping out of togas, bearing artistic inspiration to men. Mid-19th century: Breast as Sex Object, eroticized by Renoir and Gauguin. Twentieth-century: Breast as Object of Male Avante-Garde Hysteria -- "not so much sexual as hostile," Neumaier said.


In the United States, the exhibit made such an impression that Neumaier did a follow-up project called "Metropolitan Dicks." Although the Metropolitan Museum never responded officially to either show, Neumaier said, "Most of the curators I have talked to just think it's a riot."





"Metropolitan Tits" is on until Oct. 30 at the L Gallery at 26 Oktyabrskaya Ulitsa. Open 10 P.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Friday. Tel. 289-2491. Nearest metro: Rizhskaya.